


Being Known as Luke Skywalker

by authorperson



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, Lots of worldbuilding and headcanons, Multi, Star Wars as a cult classic in the Star Wars universe, but it still acts like Star Wars, christmas special and all, having fun in the GFFA, iconography, it has about the same following as Rocky Horror, its called Force Wars, nothing is canon but the movies and tv shows, outsider pov
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-19
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2018-10-07 19:25:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10367676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/authorperson/pseuds/authorperson
Summary: In a galaxy where the beings of the Republic had a fairly reliable news media up until the last days of the war, most people know a lot more than they let on. Particularly about the Jedi. There's a misconception among the youth these days that they were all tree-hugging aliens or some religious cult, but there are beings who lost siblings to the Purge, beings who worked with Jedi daily. There were movies, for crying out loud. Kenobi and Skywalker were famous.Imperial censors can't remove memories no matter how hard they try, and anyone over the age of twenty has plenty of those. Anyone who's ever been to an illegal midnight Force Wars screening has plenty of those. Its just most beings are usually sensible enough not to mention them. Talking of that time is seditious, after all. But everyone in the Alliance is already a criminal in the eyes of the Empire.Some images stay with you. Some names carry weight.Also, a heck of a lot of people just really like Force Wars.





	1. Kenobi and Skywalker

Near as Intelligence can figure in the days and weeks to come, the name of Skywalker re-enters the galaxy in the cell of the last Princess of Alderaan.

“You’re _who?_ ” she asks, and if she’d been thinking clearly, if the shards of Alderaan hadn’t yet been fresh made and floating within sight of the Death Star’s viewscreens, she would not have been the least surprised. She called for the help of Kenobi, and she got Skywalker. Half of her father’s war stories started that way, and the rest started the other. But Alderaan is gone and the wound is fresh and deep. She doesn’t quite believe that anything can be going right for her today. She doesn’t quite believe that a Skywalker can be this short.

He says he’s with Kenobi, though, and that does it. She goes with him. Inside five minutes, they’ve been shot at, she’s led them through a ten-foot drop into a magnetically shielded trash compactor, Skywalker’s nearly got himself eaten by some swamp creature the Empire picked up Force-knows-where, and they’ve all nearly been crushed to conserve. This entire mess is more than half his fault, but Skywalker and his droids get them out of it alive. It’s like every single story her father ever told. 

She kisses him, for luck.

Of course, it doesn’t quite ring true for long, for nothing can ever quite ring true again, in this galaxy without Alderaan. He’s clearly not the same Skywalker, clearly a brother or a cousin or a son, but that’s only the beginning. Skywalker’s droids turn out to be her droids, the escape ship is a vacuum crisis just waiting to happen, and this mercenary they’re dependent on drives her up the wall. To top it all off, Kenobi dies at Vader’s hand, the last gasp of a battle which began before she and Skywalker were even born. On this day of wonders and horrors, none of it surprises her.

Skywalker mourns Kenobi. Of course he does. Even through her own wordless, fathomless grief, this is a loss that she knows must be comforted.

When they get to base, it takes a little while for the word to spread. There’s a mercenary to pay, a planet to mourn, a battle station to kill or be killed. The slicers are swarming over the Princess’ astromech, analysts are pouring over the technical read outs he delivered, and an unranked Intelligence operative corners the two or three Imperial defectors to be had in every Alliance base and grills them for anything they have on typical battlestation tactics. They are busy, and terrified, and there are no Bothans on Yavin 4; the scuttlebutt is naturally slow.

Fwyn Tiree mentions it offhand to a Y-wing tech in the hurry-up-and-wait before the action. The callsign Red Five has been filled.

“What, really?” questions Ia, soldering a tetherpoint of Tiree’s crashweb somewhere behind the jumpseat. This Y-wing has a list of maintenance requests as long as Ia’s feederlimb; having to solder the pilot into his seat every time is only the most annoying. A curious eyestalk sprouts from Ia’s shoulder, and peers over at the X-wing bays. “We thought, with Leygnor on that mission—“

“—they were leaving Red Five open for him, yeah,” finishes Tiree. “So did we.”

The soldering ion flips off, and three more eyestalks migrate over to get a better look. One swivels to blink at Tyree. “What made Commander Dreis change his mind?”

“I dunno,” Tiree shrugs. Ia purses a mouthslit and remembers to slide it over so Tiree can see it. “Don’ look at me like that, Commander just heard the kid’s name and gave him the ‘wing. Wouldn’t want him with me on those credentials, if ya know what I’m sayin’.”

“That’s not like Dreis,” says Ia. “What’s the name?”

“Skywalker, or something,” Tiree says, with a shrug that shows his age.

Ia is older than Tiree. Ia knows exactly what that means

Tiree and his troublesome Y-wing don’t come back. Red Five does, of course. Red Two already calls him Boss.

By the time the survivors land, Red Five and Red Two and Gold Six and that beat-up YT-class, the entire base knows, and the bit with the targeting computer only confirms it. All the Jedi-Generals used to fly blind, anyone who’s ever seen a _Force Wars_ holo knows that. Every fighter tech on the base wants to be assigned to him, but it’s far too late. Ia submitted an X-wing cert and transferred over before the battle even started.

Word gets out fast, news of the Death Star and the pilot who killed her. Intelligence latches on tight, tries to put a stop on it, to manage the information so they can work it to their benefit, but there’s nothing to be done once Mothma’s Force-cursed Bothans find out. The famous so-called Spy so-called Network is made up of nothing so much as the galaxy’s most ruthless busybodies. The news makes the Kessel Run faster than breathing, and scattered as they are, half the Alliance has heard within hours: there’s a Skywalker in their skies.

Already, there’s a Wing Marshal or two engaged in an outright war with High Command to get Skywalker’s squad for themselves, because of course they’re giving him a squad, they’d give him a damn medal after this save. There’s an Admiral or two starting up betting pools on the assignment of those wing marshals, on which ships will get to roost Skywalker’s wings. There’s a General or two wondering when Skywalker will get impatient with the black and demand to join their regiments on the ground where he can do some good. There’s an unranked Intelligence operative or two hoping they can end the war before their twenty-year-old Skywalker ulcers flare up again. After tonight, it seems like they might be able to.

They give him the medal of course. And the damn mercenary too, for good measure.

Skywalker smiles at the last Princess of Alderaan; she smiles at him right back.

Their little rebellion just became a war.


	2. Ahsoka Tano part I: Symn chaSepra

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a computer nerd seeks an authentic signature...

Skywalker becomes Commander Skywalker in short order. Somewhere in the routine intake forms, it turns out he’s not a brother or a cousin. He’s a son.

Or so he claims.

Intelligence tries and tries for a DNA match once the Commander has his medical, but for once they come up empty against the mighty fist of Imperial censorship. The unranked operative in charge has never had this problem before, but she is an A’adrii and her response is typical of that species. She finds the being that will suit it best, and hands the investigation over with full confidence.

Unranked operative code-named Symn chaSepra is in deep cover as the Alliance’s best slicer. He has a decent working knowledge of the Jedi on account of he had a clutchmate in the Coruscant Temple, and is a big enough _Force Wars_ fan to appreciate the responsibility that’s been handed to him. He takes to the investigation like he was born for it, exactly as his A’adrii colleague knew he would.

The Imperial censors can try all they want, can bury old senate proceedings or Jedi recruitment literature or whatever it is on a given day as deep as they possibly can, but most things have a way of surviving if you know where to look. The Jedi Archives may have burned, and Symn might count that the foulest of all the Empire’s many atrocities, but the Holonet, thank the Force and all the major and minor gods, is forever.

Usually, data on the Old Republic is harder to find than information on the modern atrocities, but a halfway decent slicer can get an accurate body count on any given Imperial science project within a matter of days, and records of the Clone Wars in a few weeks. Symn is considerably better than decent. A lookup from the old Jedi Data Registry? Shouldn’t be a problem.

And indeed, the JDR comes clunking back to life pretty rapidly once Symn finds it hiding on an ancient old server on the tenth moon of Bandomeer. It’s complete up to start of the Purges, and the entries of that final day are… detailed. There are pictures. Usually there’s no blood, only very tidy bodies with neat little blaster burns, but some are a little more… adventurous: a smudge below a cliff, a figure floating in vacuum, or, in one case, a stain on the teeth of a very large rancor. It’s a butcher’s bill, a virtual charnel house, and Symn is suddenly very glad his stomachs won’t betray him like a mammal’s might.

He’s deeply wary of using files so obviously tainted by the Empire, but even he can’t deny its efficiency. It takes no time at all to find a script for identifying undercover Jedi, and even less time for it to return a 97.4% voice match with the recordings of Kenobi taken off Solo’s battered YT-class. This confirmation—that the Negotiator had indeed survived to deliver Commander Skywalker to the rebellion—nets Symn a pretty sum in the betting pools; conventional wisdom, mostly riding on Solo’s word, had it that he’d turn out to be some senile old sand wizard from the wastes of Tatooine. But when Symn turns his attention to Skywalker, his luck runs out.

Skywalker—Anakin, that is, the famous one, The Hero With No Fear himself—is _nowhere_ to be found. According to the JDR, he never existed.

Symn tries everything. He hunts down and removes every little slice of Imperial code, reverse-engineers the original JDR, gives it a hard shut down and reboot, and Skywalker is not there. He brings up the Child of Interest registry, and Skywalker is not there. He brings up the Temple Intake forms, and Skywalker is not there. He checks the Initiate database for the likely period of Skywalker’s childhood, the Padawan records for the ten years leading up to the Clone Wars, even inputs the year and Corusca solar month of Skywalker’s Knighthood—cursing himself all the while that he _still knows these things_ _Sethek above how does he remember this and not his own nestmates’ names sometimes Sondet be merciful_ —to search among the Jedi Lists. He sorts the Lists by midichlorian count, by ranked swordsmanship and piloting ability, by species and aurebeshically by first name. He even checks Kenobi’s entry for his known associates, thinking surely, _surely_. Skywalker is not there.

Symn brings up the post-Purge version one last time, but he’s not even in the tiny list of one hundred forty-nine Jedi with the directive Kill on Sight still glowing red beside their names.

Symn’s clutchmate is there, though, right next to General Kenobi. Symn has to bask with his heatlamp for a long time to get back on task after that.

Skywalker’s data has been wiped clean out of the JDR. Somebody went to a lot of time and effort to achieve that, Symn knows. Luckily, time and effort is what Symn does best.

With all the determination of the more rabid breed of _Force Wars_ fan, all the skill of a slicer with warrants on nine systems, and all the resources of an unranked Intelligence operative of the Alliance to Restore the Republic, Symn goes to work.

It takes eighteen Imperial months for Symn to work out a solution, but he does. By then, nobody much cares about confirming Skywalker’s identity anymore. By then, they’ve all heard a story about Commander Skywalker knowing something he shouldn’t, about Commander Skywalker rolling his ‘wing out of the way of a torpedo with a split second to spare, about Commander Skywalker’s now-legendary reaction to his first ever _Force Wars_ screening. His squadron, who seem to have named themselves purely so their battle cry can also be a _Force Wars_ reference, has already developed a little core of survivors who make up Rogues two-through-six, and that little half-squad attack group has in turn acquired a reputation for taking on all the impossible missions and thriving on them. Rogue Group’s mission reports are starting to read like Clone Wars propaganda. Pretty much everyone takes it for granted, now, that Commander Skywalker is the General’s son.

Symn is not _everyone_. Symn didn’t spend eighteen Imperial months cross-referencing and checking the Kill on Sight list against every biometrics database he can get his claws on, up to and including the Imperial Prison Index, the _Galactic Enquirer’s_ Coruscanti Socialites to Watch listing, and the Alliance’s own sprawling, well hidden, and horribly named ARRAOIPDB, didn’t waste a perfectly good molt chasing the ghosts of Jedi thought to be long dead, didn’t ask the advice of the thrice-acursed _Bothans_ , Sekret preserve us, just to take Commander Skywalker’s identity for _granted_.

Symn has a first edition copy of the original _Force Wars_ , twenty-three years old and still in pristine condition, hidden and kept safe from the Empire and from automatic updates alike, still untainted by the appalling edits that plagued the so-called special editions. If he’s going to get Commander Skywalker to autograph it, the signature needs to be _authenticated._

It goes like this:

Of the one hundred forty-nine Jedi who survived the first day of the Purge, ninety-six of them can now be confirmed dead. This figure includes General Kenobi and Symn’s clutchmate, though Symn now feels a horrible sort of pride that she survived for three whole years. Of the fifty-four remaining, only sixteen are full-blown Jedi, having been Padawans, Knights, or Masters at the time of the Purge. Of those, five were documented seeking sanctuary on the sacred moon of Koosh, four have joined the Alliance in various capacities, three fled separately to Wild Space, two rot in Imperial prisons, unidentified, one was last spotted on a stable asteroid in the Maw, and the last is Master Yoda, who has never been heard from again. Sixteen Jedi in a wide, wide galaxy, and only one who could be relied upon to positively identify a Skywalker, and of course it would be Master Yoda: a lost cause if ever Symn saw one.

But something else catches his attention.

Symn has been a _Force Wars_ fan for a long time. He knows probably too much about the Jedi in those latter days, and about Skywalker and Kenobi in particular. And he’s curious.

Skywalker is not the only Jedi missing from the files.

Ahsoka Tano’s flimsi-trail is present, from Child of Interest through to Padawan, but the entries in it end abruptly six months before the Purge. She is not on the Kill on Sight list, but there’s no date of death listed either. 

If anyone could identify the General’s son, it’d be her.

Symn gets to work.


End file.
